—–

Light-Up Lightning Lava Lamp

Materials

• A medium sized glass or plastic container
• Cooking oil (any kind)
• Baking soda (also known as Bicarbonate of soda or Sodium bicarbonate)
• Clear vinegar
• Red food colouring (optional or use another colour)
• Coaster light – this is optional (they’re about £2 to purchase online) , instead you could use your phone light underneath.

Method

1. Into the container I put 2 heaped dessert spoons of baking soda, then poured in the oil, to about 2/3rds up, making sure to leave a room for vinegar.
2. I dyed the clear vinegar red with some food colouring, and then poured it in, almost to the top, and left the lid off!
3. Very quickly the bubble started to appear, rising up through the oil.
4. I turned on the coaster light that we’d bought for a light-up effect, it looked so cool. It was like bubbling lava erupting from a volcano during a lightning storm!

Try this activity at night with the room’s main light switch off – soooo effective, really fun!

The science bit!

Baking soda is Sodium Bicarbonate (NaHCO3) and is a  alkali. It reacts with vinegar (acetic acid – an acid) to produce the gas is carbon dioxide (CO2), which bubbles upwards through the oil. The substance left behind – a white gloopy substance – is called sodium acetate and water:

sodium bicarbonate + acetic acid ——–> carbon dioxide + sodium acetate + water

As these 2 products build up (sodium acetate and water) the reaction slows down and, so to repeat it you’ll need to add more baking soda and vinegar.

Had as much fun as we did? Then feel free to share your pictures with us on Facebook.

Want more easy fun science recipes?

Check out our other How To blogs here:

Make Fluorescent glowing goo from a yellow highlighter pen

or
Gummy Bear Osmosis

or
Our fave, easy experiments to try

Good luck and have a happy science-ing.

If you tackle this activity at home you do so at your own risk. If you have as much fun as we did, feel free to share your pictures with us on Facebook.
Bye for now
Ruth

Chief Scientist at Devon Science

The post Easy Science Experiment for Kids: Light-Up Lava Lamp [new recipe] appeared first on Devon Science.

Our Brilliant Dry Ice Potions for Family & Children’s Entertainment

In a world filled with countless ways to engage children’s curiosity, our dry ice family & children’s entertainment stands out as a unique and captivating experience. Run by trained scientists, these family & children’s entertainment (shows and workshops) offer an exciting blend of fun, science, and hands-on learning, all while ensuring safety. Read on to dive into the incredible world of dry ice potions and how they can be a remarkable addition to drop-in family & children’s entertainment for your customers.

Hands-On Learning & Fun

The heart of our workshops lies in hands-on learning. Children will get to witness the enchanting fog produced when dry ice reacts with water. In our dry ice workshops, children create their own potions in mini cauldrons, and experiment with various stylised ingredients to create colourful and bubbling concoctions. This not only sparks their creativity but also helps them understand the basics of chemistry and the scientific method.

We can delivery this in 3 ways:

1) AN INTERACTIVE SHOW (20-30 mins)

2) A DROP IN DRY ICE POTION MAKING (5-10 mins to make 1 potion)

3) A WORKSHOP – would include demo’s & potion making (ranges from 30 – 60 mins)

Our exciting family & children’s entertainment packages start at £600.

CONTACT US FOR A QUOTE OR FOR MORE INFORMATION

Unleash the Imagination

Our dry ice potion workshops go beyond simple science experiments. They encourage imaginative play, allowing children to be mad scientists or witches brewing magical elixirs. This imaginative aspect not only ignites their creativity but also builds their storytelling skills, making learning fun and memorable.

The Magic of Dry Ice Potions

These workshops offer a unique and unforgettable experience for children. Under the guidance of trained scientists, they get to witness the transformative power of science, sparking their curiosity and enthusiasm for learning. Additionally, the visual appeal of the bubbling, foggy potions creates a sense of wonder that will stay with them long after the session ends.

The Science of Dry Ice

Dry ice, the solid form of carbon dioxide, is a fascinating substance with properties that make it perfect for thrilling experiments. Trained scientists will guide youngsters through the scientific wonders of dry ice, as they watch it sublimate to create its sublime and mystical fog. With safety as our top priority, you can rest assured that children are in capable hands.

A Perfect Addition to Public Entertainment Activities

If you’re looking for something unique and different to offer for your customers, whether you’re a museum, shopping centre, adventure park or another public space, our Dry Ice Potion Workshops are the perfect choice. These workshops provide an exciting and educational drop-in activity that will leave both children and parents amazed and eager for more.

Our exciting family & children’s entertainment packages start at £600.

CONTACT US FOR A QUOTE OR FOR MORE INFORMATION

Safety First

Our workshops are conducted by scientists who are well-versed in the safety protocols and guidelines associated with working with dry ice. Children will be closely supervised to ensure a secure and educational environment. We provide protective gear, including gloves and safety glasses, to prevent any mishaps during the workshop, making it an excellent choice for public entertainment activities in various settings.

Conclusion

Our Dry Ice Potion Workshops for children, led by trained scientists, are not only fun and educational but also safe. They introduce young minds to the wonders of science in an unforgettable way and foster a love for learning, all while igniting their creativity and imagination. Whether you’re a museum or shopping centre looking to provide something exciting and different, consider adding our workshops to your list of public entertainment activities and watch as children’s eyes light up with amazement as they create their own magical potions.

Our exciting family & children’s entertainment packages start at £600.

CONTACT US FOR A QUOTE OR FOR MORE INFORMATION

The post Dry Ice Potions: Perfect for Family & Children’s Entertainment appeared first on Devon Science.

 If you’re going to have a science party with experiments and science games, you surely have got to have a science cake as well?!

These creative confections will turn any science party into a spectacular celebration.

Chemistry Cake

These are really simple Victoria sponge cakes, with chemistry inspired decorations.

One of the cakes has little plastic bottles (these are reused, not bought new) filled with colourful liquids, one of which has spilled over, tipping green icing goo all over the cake! The “Happy Birthday” topper is widely available in supermarkets.

The others have a little bottle that seems to levitates above the cake with goo pouring out of it onto the cake below. This effect is managed by using a wooden skewer covered with icing which sticks in the cake and has the bottle (or you could use a test tube) balancing on the other end. You could use a strong pipe cleaner to prop it up (also cover it with icing) so that you can bend it around a little bit.

Both are engaging ways to introduce children to chemistry and were perfect alongside the Crazy Chemistry Party package we ran for these families. 

Space Cake

Launch your party into outer space with a space and astronaut cake that’s out of this world! Featuring blue and grey colour schemes, shimmering stars around the edge and topped with edible planets, these cakes add a “wow” touch to your space science party. It’s sure to impress little astronauts and space enthusiasts alike!

Slime Party Cake

Slime is always popular, and our slime parties are usually booked for older children, aged 8 and above. The slime-themed sponge cake is easy to make, even I would try this style myself, and I am a complete cake-novice! The edible slime-splat on top leaves no doubt that this is a slime party or a slime fanatic! Colourful decorations finish it off and these are obtained from local supermarkets or online.

Atom Cake

These 3 science cake examples all have atoms in common, the building blocks of matter, but each comes with a different budget.

The grey cake is medium priced and has the birthday child’s name written in periodic table elements, and a fun molecular decorations using icing balls.

The Rainbow cake below depicts the mixing of colourful chemicals to align with our Crazy Chemistry themed science party which has colour changing bubbly chemistry, and it has a simple paper atomic topper. This cake goes to show that you don’t have to spend a fortune to get a great looking science cake.

The very tall cake you see below was very tricky to cut, but looked amazing! The text was intricate, and they added exploding stars and protons half way up, and a hand modelled test tubes and an erupting conical flask right at the top, which was perfect for the chemistry we did for his birthday party.

Harry Potter Cake

We’ve seen many Harry Potter cakes at our “Magical Potions” themed parties. Most of the time these cakes are simple sponges covered in icing with commonly found Harry Potter themed toppers, these toppers are so widely available. However, this Harry Potter cake was incredible – a Monster Book of Monsters Cake – truly spectacular.

If you’re after something a little less time consuming, then maybe Harry Potter themed cupcakes would be perfect for everyone. You can also colour the sponge inside to represent the house colours, which aren’t revealed until you bite into them….using cake to sort party guests into their houses!

Nature Cake | Savanna Cake | Farmyard Cake

I have to share this one with you. This is by far the most detailed cake we have seen at our science parties. This was for a joint party, they both loved science and agreed on having our Crazy Chemistry themed Science Party but one of the children loved farmyard animals and the other loved the savanna habitat. The cake maker made a big cake the two children could share, but half had a farm yard scene, with the other half being the savanna. The details are incredible. Every time you look at it you see something different…can you spot the spider? I love the hay bales made of mini weetabix!

Science Party Decorations

I couldn’t leave without showing you some decorations ideas that caught our eye. Yes, you can buy the usual science party decorations online but these examples below show a little more of a personal touch.

What do you think?

a welcome poster display

sweets in jumbo test tubes

guests can make edible molecules

flowers in a hanging test tube rack

science named party treats

Look at these balloons fizzing out of the conical flask! Looks amazing but it did take a long time to set up. See also that the children got cup cakes to take home with them as well as a slice of the science cake.

Final Thoughts

Science-themed cakes are the perfect way to add a touch of magic and education to your child’s science party. These creative cakes not only look fantastic but also provide an interactive and enjoyable way to learn about science. If you’d like to see more about the science parties we offer, please go here: https://devonscience.co.uk/science-parties/

Or read more about what happens at our science parties here: https://devonscience.co.uk/what-to-expect-at-our-childrens-science-birthday-parties/

Happy baking, and here’s to a party that’s scientifically sweet!

Happy science-ing

Ruth

Chief Scientist at Devon Science

The post Perfect Science Cakes for Your Child’s Science Party appeared first on Devon Science.

Halloween Science Glowing Orbeez

They are so easy to make at home using the ink from highlighter pens, which contains a compound called fluorescein that glows (fluoresces) under UV light. A safe and easy experiment that the children loved especially at this spooky time of year.

perfect for Halloween!

Materials

• Glass jars with about 200mls of water in
• Different coloured highlighter pens (we found yellow worked best)
• Pliers or something similar to help you remove the ink cartridge from the pen
• Protection for your work surface
• Clear Orbeez (also known as water beads)
• UV blacklight (torch or lamp – we used a UV lamp)

Method

First we needed to extract the ink (the fluorescein) from the cartridges.

I protected our work surfaces and using pliers I broke open the highlighter pen, removed the cartridge and popped it into the glass with about 200ml of water, and let it sit for a few minutes. I also squeezed the cartridge to help get as much ink out as possible. This ink contains the fluorescent compound, fluorescein. I used a separate container for each different coloured inks we were using. We tested yellow, green, orange and pink highlight pen inks.

You can use the extracted fluorescein in many way, not just with Orbeez, here are 2 examples that we have done recently: Spooky Liquid & Halloween Slime

Now we add the Orbeez to make Spooky Glowing Orbeez. This part is easy – I just added a handful or Orbeez to each container and let them sit overnight to swell up.

The next morning I found all the water had been absorbed, and the Orbeez were huge! However, I noticed that the pink and orange inks had left a deposit behind on the Orbeez and in the bottom of the jars, so I gave all Orbeez a rinse under running tap water in a sieve.

I popped them back into their corresponding jar, and took them to a darkened room where we switched on the UV lamp….and WOW!

We could see instantly that yellow fluoresced the brightest because the yellow ones have the highest quantity of fluorescein in. So we concentrated playing with our yellow Orbeez, and ended up mixing the others together to see what happened.

You can see the yellow Orbeez glowing the brightest

Check out the video below to see what we did and how!

If you tackle this activity at home you do so at your own risk. If you have as much fun as we did, feel free to share your pictures with us on Facebook.

More free spooky science fun this Halloween

Check out how to make own glowing spooky slime here using the same fluorescein!

For more spooky science fun head over to this tutorial to make a  gravity defying skeleton here, or BUY our   Slime Kit here.

You can also check out the workshops we have coming up in Devon, why not book on?

Happy science-ing

Ruth

Chief Scientist at Devon Science

The post Easy Glowing Orbeez Halloween Science appeared first on Devon Science.

If you have never made slime before read this blog first about how to make a basic slime:

To make spooky glowing slime you need to know the basics of slime making, read this blog to help you get started with slime making.

If you have made slime before read then follow on to know how we got the glow:

OK, so now you can confidently make slime you must have a go at this Spooky Slime.
To make our slime glow under a UV torch, we added fluorescein to the slime mixture.

“Fluorescein – what’s that?“

Don’t panic, you can get fluorescein from an everyday item you probably have at home – a highlighter pen. Yes – a highlighter pen! It’s really that easy. Fluorescein is the bright chemical inside the cartridge of a highlighter pen and it fluoresces under UV light.  We found yellow highlighter pens work best as they have a good quantity of fluorescein.

You need to extract fluorescein first, here’s how we did it:

How to Extract Fluorescein

materials

A medium sized glass container
A yellow highlighter pen
Pliers
Protection for work surface
Gloves & goggles
Water

method

First I protected the work surfaces and put on gloves & goggles as this part was messy! Using pliers I broke open the highlighter pen, removed the cartridge and popped it into the glass with about 50ml of water and squeezed out the highlight pen ink into the water.

You can actually have some UV science fun with the fluorescein liquid on its own, read how much fun we had with fluorescein here.

Make Spooky Glowing Slime with Fluorescein

Watch the video on how to make Spooky Halloween Slime here and/or read more below:

To make the slime we added the yellow liquid containing fluorescein from our highlighter pen to our glue/water slime base (before activating) and mixed it in really well. We then activated the slime with our Slime Activator. We tried adding other colours to the slime but this just hid the fluorescent effect, so I’d recommend using no other colouring or glitter etc, just the basic white PVA glue, water, the fluorescein liquid and your preferred borax solution which can be found in our slime kits here. To get the best effect of glowing slime, the room needs to be VERY dark and we used inexpensive UV torches (£4 each), which did the job brilliantly.

Want more slime recipes?

Check out our other How To blogs here:

Colour-changing thermochromic slime
Magnetic slime
Fluffy slime

OR BUY OUR DEVON-MADE SLIME KIT HERE.

We now sell ready to use slime activator in our shop too.   We have been making our own slime activator for our workshops and parties for over 10 years now and its is strong, reliable, and safe. Grab your bottle now and happy sliming!

More free spooky science fun this Halloween?

Head over to this tutorial to make Glowing Orbeez here or the  gravity defying skeleton here, or you can BUY our  Slime Kit here.

Good luck and have a happy sliming.

If you tackle this activity at home you do so at your own risk. If you have as much fun as we did, feel free to share your pictures with us on Facebook.
Bye for now
Ruth

Chief Scientist at Devon Science

The post Spooky Glowing Fluorescent Slime for Halloween appeared first on Devon Science.

Since 2005 the Coke & Mentos reaction has been wow-ing children and adults everywhere – when it goes well! Drop several Mentos into a bottle of coke or lemonade, and a huge eruption of bubbles shoots out several meters high. Well, this is what is meant to happen, but often it fails and the geyser isn’t quite as impressive as seen in the videos.

With this many children watching, its got to be right!

Impressively high, don’t you think?

Everyone wants a super-high explosion like this one!

Tips on a super-high coke geyser

You can get a super-high geyser, but first, check you’ve got the right kit:

1. Are you using the correct drink with your Mentos Mints? Fizzy drinks such as coke or lemonade are the best but not carbonated water, for example. It doesn’t matter if its sugary or diet or which brand, so long at is a carbonated pop, they all do a great job. We prefer diet drinks to regular ones as they contain less sugar. Therefore, you won’t get covered in a sticky sugary mess. They also explode higher as they are less sticky.
2. Are you using a big enough bottle of pop? Ensure you use a 2L bottle of drink, smaller bottles don’t work – they don’t have enough CO2 in them to make a good geyser.
3. Are you using the correct mints? Blue packet Mentos work best compared to the fruit flavours they do. We’ve heard that other mints work too, but we’ve not experimented with this.
4. Are you using enough mints? You need to drop in at least 5 mints at once – too few and the reaction is less impressive.

So, now you’ve got the right kit…the next thing to do is to make sure the fizzy pop is  NOT cold!

Aha!!          This is our secret to making a HUGE coke and mentos geyser!

Whatever you do, don’t use fizzy drink straight out of the fridge!

For our science business we have to get it right every time, as you can see……

What people don’t realise.

Temperature is a really important factor in this experiment, and it is rarely mentioned in tutorials and videos.

Our experiments have confirmed that cold bottles of coke or lemonade, straight out of the fridge, do not work very well at all, really disappointing results. They produce a small eruption and the reaction is much slower compared to drinks that are at room temperature. Bottles warmed up in the sun, or by a radiator work the BEST! 

Check out our image below, and yes, we dropped the Mentos in at the same time!! The drink on the right had just come out of the fridge (we cooled the Mentos too), and the one on the left was at room temperature – what a difference!

We made a video too….don’t pick a lemonade fight with a kid, you’ll always lose!

Why does temperature matter?

At warmer temperature CO2 gas particles (and other molecules) have more energy. Therefore, the particles move faster and they “want” to escape from the liquid (that they are dissolved in) quickly compared to cooler temperatures. When its warmer, gas doesn’t dissolve well in liquids and therefore is more likely to escape from a liquid (this is called Henry’s Law). Try cracking open a can of warm fizzy drink and compare it to one just from the fridge!

How does the Coke & Mentos reaction work anyway?

A 2 litre bottle of coke or lemonade has about 8 litres of CO2 dissolved in it. Have you noticed, your fizzy drink has tiny bubbles appearing on the side of the glass at a particular spot? This is because bubbles form at tiny pits, scratches and other imperfections on the container. These imperfections are called nucleation sites. On your glass, there are tiny imperfections which act as nucleation points where the bubbles can form and escape. Mentos have hundreds of tiny nucleation sites (imperfections) on their surface. Dropping Mentos into coke or lemonade allows the dissolved gas within the liquid to come out at all these nucleation points on the Mentos surface. Thus the Coke and Mentos reaction is a physical one, not a chemical reaction. Now you know!

Want more easy science guides?

Head on over to our blog to find out other cool experiments such as Glowing Fluorescent Liquid or the Super Easy 6 – a free download with 6 super-easy experiments to try at home!

Click here for the perfect slime.

You can also check out the award winning science workshops that are coming up in Devon, why not book on?

If you try these activities at home you do so at your own risk.

Happy science-ing

Ruth

Chief Scientist at Devon Science

The post The problem with the Coke & Mentos experiment that few people know about. appeared first on Devon Science.

Gummy Bear Osmosis experiment is a fun demonstration to help explain the tricky subject of osmosis, as well as being a great way to teach experimental design. It’s also an experiment you can eat when you’re finished! Read on to find out why the Gummy Bear Osmosis Experiment is so good at teaching osmosis (obviously!), but also experimental design, mass, weight & volume as well as embedding maths.

OK, so lets start at the beginning……

What is Osmosis?

Osmosis is the diffusion of water molecules from a dilute liquid (where there are many water molecules) to a more concentrated solution (where there are fewer water molecules) across a selectively permeable membrane. Selectively permeable is a membrane which allows some molecules to pass through but inhibits others. These membranes can be found in nature, such as membranes surrounding cells or synthetically made membranes.

Why a Gummy Bear?

The Gummy Bear has a selectively permeable coating which will allow water molecules to diffuse across, but inhibiting other larger molecules. In this osmosis experiment the water molecules move into the bear, thus enlarging it.

Material used

You’ll need these things:

• Gummy bears
• Cups
• Water (and other liquids for the extended project)
• Paper towels
• Kitchen item for measuring liquids, e.g. measuring cup/jug/cylinder.
• Weighing scales/balance that can weigh to 0.1g increments.

Method

1) Take 2 gummy bears that are the same colour and similar size. Record their weights*.
*see Lab Notes below.

Record the weight of the gummy bear before the experiment

2) Take 2 identical cups, and put a gummy bear in each. Fill ONE cup with water so that the bear is submerged, but measure the amount of water you use as this information will be useful later on. The other cup remains dry (no water). This is your control bear which will prove the bear does not enlarge without water!

Set up of the TEST gummy bear.

Set up a control gummy bear (no water)

3) Leave both bears for several hours, or overnight preferably and then compare gummy bears.

Gummy Bear Osmosis – the results

4) The next day, take the bears out of their cups, trying not to lose any water from the wet bear, and pat the wet one dry with a paper towel.

Now weigh both bears, and record the results.

Calculate the weight gained by the enlarged bear by subtracting the weight before from the weight after.
We need to check the weight of the control bear as well, as this may have changed too.

Take this a step further if you want to, by calculating the percentage weight* gained.

* see Lab Notes below.

Comparison of before & after weights – this Gummy Bear gained 6.39g

5) Finally, measure the volume of water left behind in the enlarged bear’s cup…has it altered? Where has it gone??

How did the bear get so BIG?

Well, we already know from the introduction that water diffuses from an area of high concentration of water molecules (i.e. a dilute solution) to an area of low water concentration. In this experiment water moves into the Gummy Bear, where there are fewer water molecules, making it swell up. The water keeps moving until the water molecules are evenly spaced out (i.e. have reached an equilibrium). The molecules stop diffusing when they reach equilibrium.

Make this a bigger project.

So we put our bear in water, which obviously has lots of water molecules in, but what if our liquid had fewer water molecules compared to the bear. What would happen? Which direction would the water molecules move and what effect would that have in the bear?

……Over to you to find out….

Extend this experiment by trying different liquids, such as vinegar, salty water, juice and so on. Make sure you set them all up at the same time so the bears spend an equal amount of time in each liquid, and always include a control Gummy Bear (bear in no liquid).

Lab notes

Why must the bear be the the same colour?

Changing the colour adds a new variable to the experiment, and you need to be sure that any change in the gummy bear size is due to the water you are putting them in, and not their colour!

Why do they have to be the same size?

Well they don’t really have to be, but they should be about the same size, for the same reasons we need the colour to be the same. You are calculating the change in weight, which is more accurate than just looking at the bears and saying that one is bigger than the other! What does “bigger” mean?

How to calculate percentage weight gain.

To find out the percentage gain, you divide the weight gained by the start weight and multiply by 100.
This is useful because it allows you to compare the results of different Gummy Bear osmosis experiments, where the start weight will be slightly different for each bear.

Lets look at my example above:

The bear gained was 6.39 grams and the start weight was 1.7g….so, 6.39g divided by 1.7g = 3.76g x 100 = 376%.  So the bear has an increase in weight of 376%.

If you tackle this activity at home you do so at your own risk. If you have as much fun as we did, feel free to share your pictures with us on our Facebook page.

Ruth

Chief Scientist at Devon Science

Want more easy science to do?

So you liked this activity and want more ideas, right? Well head on over to our blog to find out other cool experiments such as Glowing Fluorescent Liquid or the Super Easy 6 – a free download with 6 super-easy experiments to try at home!

The post Gummy Bear Osmosis Experiment appeared first on Devon Science.

Here we explain how to easily carry out an owl pellet dissection and how to clean your boney finds! Before you carry out an owl pellet dissection, though, its important to have some background knowledge of what an owl pellet actually is. No, its not poop!

What is an owl pellet?

An Owl Pellet is the indigestible parts of it meal that owls regurgitate after eating. Each pellet can contain fur, bones, teeth, claws, and seeds.

Why do owls make pellets?

A barn owl (which is the owl where we get our pellets from) swallows it’s prey whole. It enters the stomach where the digestive enzymes start to digest it, especially the soft parts. The food then goes into the muscular gizzard area of the stomach, and here the food is gently squeezed, sending the parts it can digest into the digestive system where the nutrients are absorbed into the blood, and the parts it can’t digest, like fur and bones, get compacted down and are then regurgitated after a few hours. This is the pellet we dissect!

Dissecting owl pellets

The pellets we buy in for our workshops are sterilised by heat treating to kill any bacteria, and come wrapped in foil. This makes them safe for you to handle. You can now buy these pellets from us in kits which contain our unique ID chart, dissecting tools and a little pot to store your boney finds!

HOW TO DISSECT AN OWL PELLET

BUY THE OWL PELLET DISSECTING KIT HERE

You can purchase owl pellet kits from us by clicking here and dissect out the bones using the forceps in the kit. We also supply cocktail sticks which are useful to push debris out of crevices and sockets in the bones. Carefully remove the fur, and then gently rinse the bones in water to remove any last bits of dirt. 

Lay the bones out carefully and use the ID chart (that comes in the kit) to help work out wheat the little bones are. Bear in mind that the bones you have found may be from one animal, so the jaw bones may have been attached from the skull in your pellet!

How to clean the owl pellet bones

Once you have dissected your pellet, and identified the bones, you can clean them to make them white and keep them. Some people make jewellery with them, or pop them in tiny glass bottles, or embed them in resin to create decorative items. To make the bones white, you will need 3% hydrogen peroxide from the pharmacy. Dilute the required amount of hydrogen peroxide with 2 thirds water (thereby making a 1% solution of hydrogen peroxide) and add it to a glass jar, pop the bones in, and you’ll see bubble start to form pretty quickly.

Bones in a weak hydrogen peroxide solution.

Bubbles appear once in the cleaning solution – this is normal.

Let this sit for a day and you should have clean bones in 24 hours. When clean, rinse them in water, and put them somewhere safe to dry. 

After 24 hours, rinse the bones off in water, then place them onto a paper towel to dry

Now your bones are clean and preserved. Store them in a box, pot or box.

BUY THE OWL PELLET DISSECTING KIT HERE

CHECK OUT OUR LITTLE SHOP FOR OTHER SCIENCE GOODIES HERE

Want free science activities?

Head on over to our blog to find out other cool science experiments such as Bath Bombs and Slime  and the Magic Milk Experiment  

If you have any queries, please call/text Ruth on 07847006048 or contact us here.

Happy science-ing

Ruth

Chief Scientist  

The post Owl Pellet Dissection appeared first on Devon Science.

This is so easy to do!

Extracting the fluorescent liquid from a highlighter pen to make glowing fluorescent liquid is so easy, you should try it for an spooky themed science experiment.

This is so easy to do!

We did this at home recently and we were amazed at how bright the fluorescent liquid was. The kids loved it, just pouring it into the containers was really satisfying. We wrote secret messages with it and drew pictures too, which looked awesome under UV light! Fluorescein from these pens is safe to handle too – win:win!

See how we did it and watch the video…..

Materials used

• a yellow highlighter pen
• water
• pliers
• protection for work surface
• hand held UV blacklight (we have a UV lamp, but a torch worked too).

Method

Here’s how I extracted fluorescein from a highlighter pen:

First I protected our work surfaces as this part was messy!

Using pliers I broke open the highlighter pen, removed the cartridge and popped it into the glass with some water.

After a few minutes, most of the ink had flowed into the water, but I gave the cartridge a good squeeze to make sure all the ink was out!

We switched on the blacklight and turned off the main light….and WOW! We had a lot of fun pour and playing with the fluorescein liquid n the UV lighting.

As you can see from the video we made some mess, but it was really easy to clean up and left no stains.

This Glowing Goo can be used for more fun science – making fluorescent slime, glowing lava lamps, spooky orbeez or even a glowing lava lamp as seen here:

If you tackle this activity at home you do so at your own risk. If you have as much fun as we did, feel free to share your pictures with us on Facebook.

You could try other colours of highlighter pen, but we found the yellow ones worked best as they have a good quantity of fluorescein.

More free spooky science fun this Halloween

Head over to this tutorial to make Glowing Orbeez here or  Spooky Halloween Slime here (uses fluorescein), or gravity defying skeleton here, or you can BUY our  Slime Kit here.

You can also check out the workshops we have coming up in Devon, why not book on?

Happy science-ing

Ruth

Chief Scientist at Devon Science

The post Make Fluorescent Glowing Liquid appeared first on Devon Science.

The post Everyday Things You Should Look at Under a Microscope appeared first on Devon Science.